For the first time, South Sudan and Kosovo have been recognized by the International Olympic Committee. Kosovo, which was a province of the former Yugoslavia, will have 8 athletes competing; and a good shot for a medal in women's judo: Majlinda Kelmendi is considered a favorite. She's ranked first in the world in her weight class.

(PHOTO: Workers set up camp at Santiago's Rio Mapocho/Mason Bryan, The Santiago Times)Chile nears 1 month without mail service as postal worker protests continue. This week local branches of the 5 unions representing Correos de Chile voted on whether to continue their strike into a 2nd month, rejecting the union's offer. For a week the workers have set up camp on the banks of Santiago's Río Mapocho displaying banners outlining their demands; framing the issue as a division of the rich & the poor. The strike’s main slogan? “Si tocan a uno, nos tocan a todos,” it reads - if it affects 1 of us, it affects all of us. (Read more at The Santiago Times)

WHO convenes emergency talks on MERS virus

(PHOTO: Saudi men walk to the King Fahad hospital in the city of Hofuf, east of the capital Riyadh on June 16, 2013/Fayez Nureldine)The World Health Organization announced Friday it had convened emergency talks on the enigmatic, deadly MERS virus, which is striking hardest in Saudi Arabia. The move comes amid concern about the potential impact of October's Islamic hajj pilgrimage, when millions of people from around the globe will head to & from Saudi Arabia. WHO health security chief Keiji Fukuda said the MERS meeting would take place Tuesday as a telephone conference & he told reporters it was a "proactive move". The meeting could decide whether to label MERS an international health emergency, he added. The first recorded MERS death was in June 2012 in Saudi Arabia & the number of infections has ticked up, with almost 20 per month in April, May & June taking it to 79. (Read more at Xinhua)

HUM HUMOR

"CLIMATE CHANGE: EVERYWHERE"

CARTOON: Peter Broelman, Australia/BROELMAN.com.au)

LINKS TO OTHER STORIES

Dreams and nightmares - Chinese leaders have come to realize the country should become a great paladin of the free market & democracy & embrace them strongly, just as the West is rejecting them because it's realizing they're backfiring. This is the "Chinese Dream" - working better than the American dream. Or is it just too fanciful? By Francesco Sisci

The South: Busy at the polls - South Korea's parliamentary polls will indicate how potent a national backlash is against President Lee Myung-bak's conservatism, perceived cronyism & pro-conglomerate policies, while offering insight into December's presidential vote. Desire for change in the macho milieu of politics in Seoul can be seen in a proliferation of female candidates. By Aidan Foster-Carter

Pakistan climbs 'wind' league - Pakistan is turning to wind power to help ease its desperate shortage of energy,& the country could soon be among the world's top 20 producers. Workers & farmers, their land taken for the turbine towers, may be the last to benefit. By Zofeen Ebrahim

Tajikistan, by most measures Central Asia’s poorest and most vulnerable state, is now facing yet another major problem: the growing security threat from both local and external insurgencies.

After his security forces failed to bring warlords and a small group of young insurgents to heel in the eastern region of Rasht in 2010-2011, President Emomali Rakhmon did a deal to bring a temporary peace to the area. But he may soon face a tougher challenge from the resurgent Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a group with a vision of an Islamist caliphate that is fighting in Afghanistan alongside the Taliban.

That conflict is moving closer to the 1,400km Afghan-Tajik border. Many anti-government guerrillas operating in northern Afghanistan are of Central Asian origin and are largely affiliated with the IMU, which seems to be focusing on its fight against the government in Kabul but may at some stage turn its attention northwards. Tajikistan has almost no capacity to tackle a dedicated insurgent force; its efforts to quell problems in Rasht have left its only well-trained counter-insurgency unit with just over 30 fighters.

A decade of increased international attention and aid has failed to make Tajikistan more secure or prosperous. A kleptocracy centred on the presidential family has taken much of the money from assistance and aluminium. Popular discontent over poverty and failing services has been kept in check by repression and an exodus of the dissatisfied as migrant workers. All institutions have been hollowed out, leaving a state with no resilience to cope with natural disasters, economic crises or political shocks.

A new generation of guerrillas is emerging, both within Tajikistan and in the IMU. They are mostly men in their twenties with little memory of the Tajik civil war of 1992-1997. This development has punctured two comfortable assumptions: that the IMU was a forlorn rump of ageing jihadists and that Tajiks were too scarred by the memory of the brutal civil war to turn on the regime. The latter has long been central to the analyses of both the Tajik leadership and many foreign governments.

The secular, Soviet-trained leadership that emerged from the civil war now finds itself dealing with a society increasingly drawn to observant Islam. The regime’s response to this is as inept as its efforts to bring Rasht to heel. Tajiks studying in foreign Islamic institutions have been called home; the government is trying to control the content of Friday sermons and prevent young people from visiting mosques; it has also dismissed some clerics. Officials allege that the main opposition party, the Islamic Renaissance Party, is becoming increasingly radicalised. Clumsy policies may make this a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Jihadist groups, too, are paying more attention to Tajikistan. Limited infiltration of armed guerrillas from Afghanistan has been taking place for several years. The numbers seem relatively small and their intent unknown. Many pass through to other countries – notably Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Some, however, are probably probing for government vulnerabilities. A small number of fighters from the North Caucasus have also been active in Tajikistan in recent years.

Radicalization by osmosis is growing: Tajikistan is gradually becoming part of the virtual jihad. Islamist websites are paying increasing attention to events in the country. Islamic militants in Tajikistan are adopting tactics already well known in other jihadist struggles, notably in the North Caucasus. In September 2010 the country witnessed what was described as its first suicide bombing. And while most military attention is focused on Rasht, the northern border area of Isfara, not far from Khujand, is developing the reputation of a safe haven for armed militants.

Billions of dollars of drugs pass through Tajikistan en route to Russia and China every year. There is a strong suspicion within the international community that senior members of the ruling elite are protecting the transit of narcotics from Afghanistan. High-level protection is almost certainly undermining international organisations’ attempts to control the border with Afghanistan – efforts that officials involved admit have had very little effect. At a time of growing menace from Afghanistan, the first line of defence is being kept artificially weak.

With the IMU engaged, for now, in Afghanistan, it would be advisable to use whatever breathing space is available to re-evaluate security and aid policies.

China, a silent but crucial player in the region with vital security interests, could usefully be drawn into joint consultations, along with the U.S., Russia and others, on measures to assess the security problems and possible responses.

Bilateral and multilateral donors should examine the utility of providing assistance to a regime that cannot prevent a very significant proportion being lost to corruption. Conditionality should be adopted as the norm. The Tajik government should be put on notice that a failure to address support for the narcotics trade within its own elite will seriously damage its credibility and outside support.

President Rakhmon denies that the North African scenario of popular unrest and revolt could happen in Tajikistan; despite the different circumstances, such confidence is questionable.

Tajikistan is so vulnerable that a small, localised problem could quickly spiral into a threat to the regime’s existence. The speed with which the popular mood can move from passivity to anger was demonstrated not just in the Middle East, but much closer to home, in Kyrgyzstan, in April 2010. Tajikistan is not immune.

- The International Crisis Group is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict. The recommendations by ICG on the above topic can be found here.

(HN, February 10, 2011) - Like most other economies in Europe and Central Asia, Tajikistan depends heavily on foreign trade. Economists who monitor the country’s import and export data—which are reported on a monthly basis by the Statistical Agency—may think they are keeping a finger on Tajikistan’s pulse.Water is become a scarce - and increasingly precious - resource in many countries surrounding Tajikistan. UNICEF

They might be wrong. Especially when it comes to exports.

Sometimes, however, these data obscure more than they illuminate. Rather than worrying about cotton and aluminum, it may be more helpful to think of Tajikistan as one of the world’s leading exporters—both directly and indirectly—of labour and water.

As per international practice, Tajikistan’s foreign trade statistics emphasize the final products that are bought and sold abroad. For Tajikistan’s exports, this boils down to aluminum and cotton, which generate three quarters of the country’s export revenues.

In one sense, this is no surprise: anyone familiar with rural life in Tajikistan knows that “cotton is still king” in the countryside. The importance of the TALCO aluminum smelter in Tursunzode just west of Dushanbe—Tajikistan’s largest industrial enterprise and leading exporter—is likewise well known.

However, both cotton and aluminum production can be seen as algorithms for reprocessing water—which is where Tajikistan’s true riches lie.

More than half of the water used by Central Asia’s 60 million inhabitants comes from rivers whose headwaters rise in Tajikistan (population 7.5 million).

It is this water that turns turbines in hydropower plants along the Vakhsh river cascade, which generate the electricity needed to derive aluminum from bauxite. Water from these rivers also feeds the canals that irrigate Tajikistan’s thirsty cotton fields. Tajikistan’s exports are really about water—embodied in aluminum ingots and cotton fiber.

When Tajikistan’s (mostly cotton and aluminum) exports are compared to its imports, they are often found wanting: the country reports a yearly trade deficit in the neighborhood of $1.5 billion. But Tajikistan’s single most important export—labour—is not captured in the trade statistics.

Every year some 800,000 to 1.5 million (no one is quite sure how many) Tajikistani citizens work abroad, chiefly in Russia. The IMF and National Bank of Tajikistan estimate that these migrants sent home $2.4 billion in remittances in 2010—roughly double the $1.2 billion earned from exporting aluminum, cotton, and other commodities and manufactured goods (see Charts 1 and 2 above).

If the country’s trade balance is recalculated as exports minus imports plus remittances, then Tajikistan consistently runs a healthy external surplus. Looked at from this perspective, Tajikistan’s reported average annual 9% GDP growth during 2000-2008 does not seem so surprising. Nor does the continuation of economic growth (albeit at a slower pace), or relative stability of the somoni (the national currency), during the global economic crisis of 2009-2010.

Many economists would argue that the balance of payments—and particularly the current account balance, which shows exports and imports of services, as well as of good and remittances—provides the fullest measure of an economy’s engagement with the rest of the world.

But Tajikistan’s balance-of-payments data are reported with some delay: at present, the most recent BoP data available on the National Bank of Tajikistan website are from the first quarter of 2010. By contrast, data on merchandise exports and imports, and on remittances, are reported monthly. If we want to track how Tajikistan is faring in the world economy in real time, exports minus imports plus remittances may be our best shot.

Tajikistan is a low-income country where some 3 million people struggle to get by on $2.15/day or less. Poverty reduction, providing access to clean water and sanitation services, creating decent jobs at home, and addressing gender inequalities are major challenges. Migration may be a cash cow, but it can also be a hardship for divided families.

Understanding these challenges and helping the country to attain the Millennium Development Goals requires a deep knowledge of Tajikistan’s economy, and its official economic data.

Sometimes, however, these data obscure more than they illuminate. Rather than worrying about cotton and aluminum, it may be more helpful to think of Tajikistan as one of the world’s leading exporters—both directly and indirectly—of labour and water.

(HN, January 7, 2011) - Fardin Saidulayev manages a newspaper kiosk in the Russian city of Novosibirsk, where he is one of the few Tajik laborers to hold a coveted work permit. Yet he faces an uncertain new year. As of January 1, new Russian legislation bans foreigners from working in trade. Saidulayev says he now lives in constant fear he will be fired, or even deported.Young Tajik men, returning home on a 97-hour train ride from Moscow, arrive at the main station in Dushanbe in February 2009. Russia is tightening immigration procedures, saying the country only needs skilled, Russian-speaking laborers. The change could have a drastic effect in Tajikistan, where migrant-worker remittances comprise up to half the country's GDP. CREDIT: David Trilling/EurasiaNet.org

“I am not sure what I will do,” Saidulayev, 26, said recently. Originally from the town of Ishkashim in the Pamir Mountains, Saidulayev has been in Russia for three years. “I may try to keep working here or I may have to start working on a building site, but competition for jobs there is fierce and the pay is lower,” he added.

Though its economy is rebounding from the 2008 global financial crisis, Moscow, the scene of recent ethnic rioting, is tightening immigration procedures. Russian officials now say the country only needs skilled, Russian-speaking laborers. The changes could have a drastic effect in Tajikistan, where migrant-worker remittances comprise up to half the country’s GDP.

Around 98 percent of Tajik migrants in Russia work as unskilled laborers, Viktor Sebelev, the head of the Russian Federal Migration Service’s office in Tajikistan, said recently in Dushanbe. Many fail to integrate into Russian society. The Moscow-based Center of Migration Studies says that only 50 percent of labor migrants are literate enough in Russian to complete official documents; 20 percent have no command of the language at all.

In November, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed the decree banning foreign laborers from working as traders in outdoor kiosks and markets and from selling alcohol or pharmaceuticals. Foreigners still have the right to work in markets as loaders, cleaners, wholesalers or managers.

Since Putin signed the legislation, official rhetoric justifying the measure has intensified.

In early December, newly appointed Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced new restrictions on migration to Moscow. The mayor called for “firm control” over immigration and declared the quota of foreign workers in the city would be decreased to 200,000, an almost 50 percent drop in 2011 from the previous year’s total. "I have nothing against migrants, the city needs them. I just want to understand what kind of specialists are needed and in what areas," he said in comments carried by the state news agency, RIA Novosti.

Similarly, the government has cut its migrant work permit quota again this year to 1.5 million, a significantly smaller number than in 2007 when 6 million migrants obtained work permits, RIA Novosti reported.

The Federal Migration Service also announced in early December that it would compile a list of all migrants from the CIS in Russia, a process expected to take two years. Proponents claim that legalizing a migrant’s status guarantees more rights, including access to healthcare. But the number of unregistered migrants far exceeds the number of permits. Some estimates place the number of migrant workers in Russia at 12 million.

A reduction in unskilled labor migration could have serious repercussions for Tajikistan’s feeble economy. In 2009, according to the International Organization of Migration (IOM), 18 percent of the working-age population migrated abroad; their remittances accounted for 49.6 percent of GDP. Tajik government officials estimate that 900,000 Tajiks work in Russia, 30 percent in trade like Saidulayev.

There is skepticism, however, whether Putin’s new decree is enforceable. In Dushanbe, the IOM’s Malika Yarbabaeva expects it "won’t result in the mass return of migrants from Russia." A similar law from 2007 was never effectively implemented, she argues, noting that only 17 percent of all migrants live legally in Russia, highlighting the Moscow’s weak control over the state bureaucracy.

Nevertheless, the new law will simply augments the black market for foreign labor, pushing more migrants into unsafe conditions, said an official from Tajikistan’s migration service. “I do not think we will see many Tajiks return. The migrants will find loopholes in the law and continue to work in Russia. For instance, they will register their stalls in the names of Russian citizens,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of concern for vexing his Russian counterparts. The Tajik official argued that many Tajiks will continue to work illegally in the trade sector.

That is bad news for Saidulayev, who feels that, because he is legally registered, he has a higher profile than many migrants and could be singled out and made an example of. “I am being punished for living here legally when many people from my country live here illegally. I think this new policy will compel many Tajiks to continue living outside the Russian laws,” he said by telephone from Novosibirsk.

“At the moment I am waiting,” Saidulayev said, calling the distinction between skilled and unskilled laborers arbitrary. “I expect the police will come to close me down soon. If this happens, I don’t know what I will do.”

Edward Lemon is a freelance journalist based in Dushanbe. This article originally appeared in EurasiaNet.org

The 34th session of the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO ended yesterday in Brazil. A total of 39 sites were considered for inscription on the World Heritage List.

It inscribed sites in Saudi Arabia, Australia, India, Islamic Republic of Iran and, for the first time, a site in the Marshall Islands to the UNESCO World Heritage List. A cultural site was added in Tajikistan, and a new natural site was added in Kiribati.

In the wake of World War II, in a move closely related to the beginnings of the Cold War, the United States of America decided to resume nuclear testing in the Pacific Ocean, on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall archipelago. After the displacement of the local inhabitants, 67 nuclear tests were carried out from 1946 to 1958, including the explosion of the first H-bomb (1952). Bikini Atoll has conserved direct tangible evidence that is highly significant in conveying the power of the nuclear tests, i.e. the sunken ships sent to the bottom of the lagoon by the tests in 1946 and the gigantic Bravo crater. Equivalent to 7,000 times the force of the Hiroshima bomb, the tests had major consequences on the geology and natural environment of Bikini Atoll and on the health of those who were exposed to radiation. Through its history, the atoll symbolises the dawn of the nuclear age, despite its paradoxical image of peace and of earthly paradise. This is the first site from the Marshall Islands to be inscribed on the World Heritage List.

Sarazm, which means “where the land begins”, is an archaeological site bearing testimony to the development of human settlements in Central Asia, from the 4th millennium BCE to the end of the 3rd millennium BCE. The ruins demonstrate the early development of proto-urbanization in this region. This centre of settlement, one of the oldest in Central Asia, is situated between a mountainous region suitable for cattle rearing by nomadic pastoralists, and a large valley conducive to the development of agriculture and irrigation by the first settled populations in the region. Sarazm also demonstrates the existence of commercial and cultural exchanges and trade relations with peoples over an extensive geographical area, extending from the steppes of Central Asia and Turkmenistan, to the Iranian plateau, the Indus valley and as far as the Indian Ocean.

The Phoenix Island Protected Area (PIPA) is a 408,250 sq.km expanse of marine and terrestrial habitats in the Southern Pacific Ocean. The property encompasses the Phoenix Island Group, one of three island groups in Kiribati, and is the largest designated Marine Protected Area in the world. PIPA conserves one of the world’s largest intact oceanic coral archipelago ecosystems, together with 14 known underwater sea mounts (presumed to be extinct volcanoes) and other deep-sea habitats. The area contains approximately 800 known species of fauna, including about 200 coral species, 500 fish species, 18 marine mammals and 44 bird species. The structure and functioning of PIPA’s ecosystems illustrates its pristine nature and importance as a migration route and reservoir. This is the first site in Kiribati to be inscribed on the World Heritage List.

(HN, May 22, 2010) The United Nations is appealing for $ 5.3 million to provide relief and recovery assistance to thousands of people that had been affected by the flashfloods in Kulyab and the surrounding districts in the south of Tajikistan on 7 May.Floods have hit Tajikistan for the second year-in-a-row.

The displaced are currently staying in tent camps. Another 16,000 persons in rural areas had lost their livelihoods and their livestock. OCHA says the hard-hit needed life-sustaining support for up to six months.

Byrs said the appeal included 26 projects proposed by United Nations agencies and partners. Tajikistan was already the poorest country of the 15 former Soviet republics, she noted.

In May 2009, two major floods destroyed four villages in Tajikistan's southern Khatlon Province, displacing about 440 families.

VANCOUVER (HN, Feb 18) - Agreeing that the smaller countries at the 2010 Winter Olympics receive little attention, Grade 11 students at RC Palmer Secondary School in Richmond have partnered with HUM to draw more attention to teams sidelined at the Games.

In an assignment which has clearly generated significant excitement, the students were tasked to research about a dozen HUM countries and then build Facebook fan pages for each team. Already colourful, informative pages for San Marino, Tajikistan, Algeria and Armenia are now online and gaining fans.

Said one student: "I feel like this is a great project. We all hear about Canada, America and China but none of us hear about Ghana, Armenia, Ethiopia and other countries that no one hears about. But they are still here...they are still on the world stage. To hear about these smaller countries is very cool."

For the students, Google and YouTube have proven to be powerful tools to find information about the small countries and their athletes. The RC Palmer School administration has also given the students access to a state-of-the-art computer lab to help facilitate the project.

HUM - Human Unlimited Media is the world's first, truly mobile humanitarian news agency, covering 116 mostly impoverished countries that are not part of mainstream media coverage. A sub-unit of HUM - HUMmingbirdz - promotes and develops projects specifically for children and adolescents, to promote global understanding and networking.

Watch coverage of this story on Friday, Feb. 19th on CBC News Vancouver http://www.cbc.ca/tvnewsvancouver/

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